Sermons by Reverend Stephen Garnaas-Holmes (Page 18)

God has given your gifts to you for the sake of the world. Your entire life is like a gourmet dinner that the chef has handed to you, the waiter, not to eat, but to serve. It’s a package that God has you, as a UPS driver, to deliver. All of your life is God’s gift for the world.

A mother’s love for her infant is pure and unconditional, for the child’s sake, not her own. God loves us like that. We can love God like that. We can love our neighbors like that, with the very love with which we ourselves are loved.

Domestic violence affects a quarter of all the women you’ll meet. We often ask “Why does she stay?” But instead we should ask “Why does he hit?” Even better: “Why do WE stay?” Why do we tolerate violence? Christ calls us to create safety for those who live in fear, and to confront a culture of violence and the objectification of women.

As (mostly) white middle class Americans we benefit from a hidden, powerful system of power, privilege and exclusion, protecting us from the lives and vulnerabilities of the poor, people of color, and so on. As followers of Jesus it’s our work to confront the injustice of racism, sexism and all forms of exclusion, to establish relationships across those barriers, and to dismantle those unjust systems.